Information Age Education

Teaching Internet Information Research

November 21st, 2006

The amazing thing about the Internet is not only how fast information can be dispersed, but also the profusion of information available. I’m learning new skills daily as I navigate in the Information Age. When I’m looking for information on a topic I follow this basic template: gather, sift, sort & synthesize. Although the basic idea of moving through information may be the same as during the Industrial Revolution, there are new tools and considerations for this new age.

Gather

• When searching for information on-line use search words intelligently. For example, if I want to learn about enlightened teaching, I might start with enlightened teaching. If that doesn’t yield results, I would do similar words like compassionate teaching or education compassion.
• Add or delete words from your query depending on what type of, or how much, information is retrieved. I could be more specific and look for teaching compassion strategies.
• Sometimes you want specific information. Putting words in quotes will find only results where those words come together. For example waldorf education and “waldorf education” will not produce the same results. Waldorf education (without quotes) could look like “waldorf salad made in a consumer education class”. Whereas “waldorf education” will definitely be about waldorf schools.

Gathering also requires a way to store information so you can sift through it. A wonderful tool to do this is a free website called del.icio.us. When you use a web-based service like del.icio.us to publicly share resources, it’s called “social bookmarking.” It’s like your own on-line, public library. Anyone can see what you’ve posted. Create a del.icio.us account and post sites that you like to your del.icio.us account, which leads to the next task of sifting.

Sift
Learning how to sift through information and to determine the bias and reliability of sources is a valuable critical thinking skill.

• As you visit different sites, it’s important to know who is the source or author.
• Identifying reliable sources are skills we regularly utilize and teach are kids. On the Internet it becomes an even more crucial skill due to the plethora of inaccurate information being disseminated.
• Ask yourself what are the source’s biases.
• Have discussions with your students around reliability and bias as a means of sifting through information. Why not have an activity where you pose a question and list several sites. Have the kids determine if there is a bias or if the source is reliable.

Sort
Use your deli.cio.us account to sort through material by using the tag feature. Tags are keywords associated with the information. Type in meaningful tags that will help you sort the information. For example, I found a PowerPoint presentation on educating Millennials. I tagged it as “education millennials powerpoint technology.”

My sister Jessie Newburn taught me about the tag “someday maybe,” which she read in David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. The “someday maybe” tag means she doesn’t want to investigate it now, but it may be of value someday, maybe. Periodically, she goes through it and deletes or acts on the “someday maybe” posts.

Synthesize

This is where life gets more interesting. As educators who use Bloom’s taxonomy, it’s always exciting when we can get kids to synthesize the material.

• What new meaning can you create from the material?
• What new insights do you have when you see the spectrum of information?

My Squidoo lenses on Educating Millennials and Integers are examples of ways that I went through the gather, sift, sort and synthesize model. The creation of the lenses was the synthesis of all the research and how I connected the dots. Very fun indeed!

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Entry Filed under: Education, Technology, Information and Media Literacy, Information Age